HEATHER NAUERT (HOST): The backdrop of this to share with our viewers, serious financial problems in the state of Michigan and also in the city of Flint. When you first heard about corners being cut and this toxic stuff being in the water, what was your reaction?
MARK AESCH: Well good morning, Heather. I got to tell you, if you look at the core responsibilities of government, right? The core responsibility of government is to make sure that the American people are safe. That's the core function of what government exists for. And so whether it's safe from those that would do us harm, foreign and domestic, whether it's making sure that we have safe food supplies, and certainly --
NAUERT: They failed to do that here. And there are toxins in the water. Was that done to just save some money because of the financial problems that Flint was in?
AESCH: So I think if you put it in that context, the other cornerstone is obviously to have safe water. And we're in a situation in Flint where they overspent for years, 60 percent more money than they took in every year. And what that leads to is exactly to that point, where you bring in an emergency manager, you can't afford what you do today, so they go to an inferior water supply simply to save money and this is what happens. I think the broader lesson is here, is what does that mean to America, where we overspend by hundreds of billions a year.
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NAUERT: You know, one more thing. You say that the government has misplaced priorities. Not in terms of where their spending money, yes, you say that. But also focusing on some things that they shouldn't spend their time on. Tell me about that.
AESCH: Well, you look at the debate that we want to have over climate change for example, while we don't have the ability to provide people in Flint with clean drinking water. You know, coming here today, as we all did to the studios, we had a one in nine chance of driving across a bridge that is structurally deficient, and we simply can't continue to have these --
NAUERT: And you also go on to say that we're spending too much time on PC stuff.
